On Foreign Affairs, U.S. Public Is Nontraditional

In Omaha, Ronna Elmborg, a part-time waitress who relies on television to tell her what is happening outside the United States, says that she follows international news ''because eventually it will all affect us.'' Take Iraq, she said, ''That could affect us in a real hurry.''

In Seattle, Greg Lulay, waiting for a bus in front of Kinko's on Broadway, said he was all for paying America's debt to the United Nations not only to support the United Nations and its views of what should be done in the world ''but as an example to other nations.''

In Harlington, Tex., Tom Kimbriel, a police sergeant, wants to see the United States become a stronger player in international affairs. ''We were granted the power, and its our responsibility to see that the neighborhood bully doesn't take on the kid with the glasses,'' he said. ''To argue that what goes on in other countries doesn't affect the United States is very childish. Just look at what we pay for a barrel of oil.''

Around the United States, an informal sampling of the attitudes of people far from the centers of foreign policy-making tends to support what some public-opinion researchers have been finding: That although a declining number of Americans say they follow foreign affairs, this might be a question of definition. Actually, the researchers are finding, even ordinary Americans who ignore many military or political developments in remote parts of the world are very interested in other international issues that they believe directly affect their lives.

Those include immigration and trade negotiations that could have an effect on their jobs or taxes, environmental issues like global warming, health threats, and drug-trafficking and other cross-border crime. They are less likely to include foreign political or military developments.

The researchers are also finding a persistent or even widening gap between the opinions of the general public and those of the people who make, think or write about foreign policy.

For example, the general public seems to support the United Nations and United States cooperation with other countries in times of crisis -- rather than solitary action by Washington playing the role of the world's police force. That attitude differs markedly from those of opinion leaders and policy-makers, especially in Congress.

Two polls this fall -- one by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (formerly the Times Mirror Center) and the other by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes reached different conclusions about the level of public interest in international events. The Pew poll concluded that Americans did not see events abroad having great effect on their lives. Polls by the University of Maryland have shown greater public concern. Both, though, found gaps between the general public's perceptions and those of opinion leaders.

The Pew poll -- which sampled foreign-affairs experts, journalists, scholars, scientists, religious leaders, governors, mayors, Congressional aides, business executives and labor leaders and measured their views against those of the general public -- found that ''American opinion leaders see the world as a better place, where U.S. influence is enhanced.''

''In striking contrast,'' the poll report said, ''the American public's global view remains bleak.'' The report, ''American's Place in the World II,'' finds that opinion leaders are more assertive about American power. Only 27 percent of those polled preferred to see the United States share power equally with other major countries. But 50 percent of members of the general public polled favored an equal spread of power.

At the independent United Nations Association of the United States, Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director of policy studies, said that this gap has been apparent for some time. A poll his organization commissioned after the 1995 Dayton peace accords, which ended the fighting in Bosnia -- when leading policy-makers were heaping abuse on the United Nations in Bosnia and had agreed on the intervention of NATO -- indicated that ''by far the largest segment plunked down for a U.N. peacekeeping force with American troops rather than a NATO operation or no response at all.''

In the 1997 University of Maryland survey, 74 percent of those polled said they wanted the United States to share power internationally, compared with 13 percent who prefer a pre-eminent American role in the world.

''Support for the U.N. is higher than support for NATO,'' said Steven Kull, director of the Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Mr. Kull believes that those in power frequently underrate, misjudge or misuse public opinion.

''Something the policy-makers do not understand is how idealistic the public still is,'' he said. ''When a member of Congress says, ''I'm an internationalist, I'm supportive, but my public doesn't understand it so I have to go along with them -- that is a misperception.''

How foreign affairs are defined makes a difference, researchers say.

The Maryland poll, and independent polling done for the United Nations Association, a private research and support group with chapters around the country, have found that Americans are less moved by abstract concepts like ''national interests'' -- a phrase often used by those in power -- and want more attention given to global social and humanitarian issues that they might not always describe as ''foreign affairs.''

Surveys find a high level of public interest in environmental destruction, health menaces that cross borders, illegal drugs, international crime and the loss of jobs to low-wage countries.

With Congress in Washington on the verge of bankrupting the United Nations by withholding $1.5 billion in overdue assessments -- or even withdrawing from it, a measure that garnered 54 votes in the House this year, though 369 voted against it -- polls indicate that the American public has significantly more support for the United Nations than does Congress.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew center, whose poll found less concern about foreign affairs than other polls have indicated, nonetheless agrees that Americans are not hostile to the United Nations.

''I think there is a really strong base of support for the U.N.,'' he said in an interview. In his latest poll, 64 percent of Americans polled -- opinion leaders and the general public combined -- gave the United Nations a favorable rating, although this has slipped from 74 percent in 1993, two years after the end of the Persian Gulf war.

''Public interest in international news stories has plummeted over a decade,'' said Mr. Kohut, with the percentage of people who said they followed foreign news dropping from 80 percent in the 1980's to 20 percent in 1997. The decline was most precipitous among young people, he said. But he added that opinion surveys find that what turns them off are traditional categories of foreign news as international politics, security, war and peace.

Mr. Kohut says that news organizations bear a share of the responsibility for driving people away. Most people receive foreign news from television, which is carrying less of it, and what there is may be largely pictorial or pitched to strategic or military issues.

''As the news hole for international news shrinks,'' he said, ''the proportion of conflict-driven stories increases. People say, 'How can one keep all these wars straight?' ''

''If you look at what American people say are high priority issues to them with regard to foreign policy, it is consistently those things which have some apparent or clear relevance to their lives,'' he said. ''Jobs comes up to the top of the list. The spread of nuclear weapons is very high -- the only traditional security problem that's way up there.

''Things like combating international drug-trafficking, insuring an adequate energy supply, improving the global environment -- these are issues that people feel affect not only the country, but affect them in their communities,'' Mr. Kohut said.

''They have a hard time dealing with issues like 'What is the relevance of failed states, in Africa, in Bosnia?' '' he said. ''But when the American public sees the relevance of an issue such as global environmental concerns or nuclear proliferation, they are as engaged as the members of the Council on Foreign Relations.''

Correction: December 29, 1997, Monday An article yesterday about Americans' views on foreign affairs misidentified a Texas city where a resident who was interviewed said that he wanted to see the United States play a stronger international role. The city is Harlingen, not Harlington.